Addiction

What is addiction ?

"An addiction is a compulsion to use a substance or persist with a certain behaviour in order to feel good or to avoid feeling bad"

The above quote in the first link that I got on google while I was searching for "Addiction what is it ? "
Lets analyse what the above statement has to say:
It says "persistent behaviour or dependence on certain substances in order to feel good and avoid feeling bad"
It define addiction as mean of doing good to self in order to avoid doing bad.
Is it true though ?
I would say, if a person is addicted he does what he does because, the habit or the behaviour is beyond his control. The feeliing of being addict is the feeling of guilt, the feeling of being helpless, lack of mental faculty to be in control of the situation and finally succumbing to the pressures. Its a kind of a circular situation of the addict knowing his problems, him trying to overcome it and in the process being dragged into the hole more so.

What are the most common addictions that people have in day to day lives that seem not to harm them on short term but, are thought to be unhealty on longer time scales.
Cigarette smoking,the extreme case would be chain smokers, people who smoke atleast a pack a day, that would make a approximatley a cigarette every hr and 15 min. Alcoholism, the extreme case of that would be people who are inebriated almost all the time, people who cant see themselves stopping with just one peck on any given ocassion. Gambling, an addiction whose consequences I have come to see on first hand basis every single day growing up as a child. Extreme case involves, people unable to control their urge to squander their hard earned money every single pay day, with some days being good when the addict wins, with the odds of loss being just too high. But still the gambler gambles, in hope to beat the odds and rise to the ocassion.

Then there are some serious maladies, like being addicted to drugs, worst amogst those being, LSD, Cocaine, Marijuana, and such "recreational drugs" as they are called, belong to the family of drugs which affect the CNS directly. They induce the feeling of short term euphoria, and are kind of drugs to which a person becomes strongly addicted, as define by his complete loss of control to avoid the use of drug.

Why do people get addicted ?

An interesting question. The answer to which many a times lies in social structure of our society.